When Sebastian Met June ✓

Part Four

Adulthood:

At the age of twenty-three, June has become her mother.

She's now a struggling single mom of a young daughter whose name she often forgets, seeking the numbness let on by recreational drugs. She's become an addict to the nothingness, seeking it out in grungy alleyways and street corners. Places where danger seems to be her shadow. She admits she is a negligent mother, not able to connect with the child she bore.

June needs guidance and doesn't know where to find it. To her, help seems like a tale, something so far out of her grasp it's unfeasible. Like the stars, wished on by some, but never touched by anyone. She knows it exists out there, somewhere, but it is such a faraway wish that she's never sought it out.

Her daughter turns five years old towards the end of July.

June isn't able to connect with the little girl who resembles her in more ways than one. Her daughter who is the product and reminder of another failed relationship. A relationship where June couldn't display intimacy nor connect with his compassion. She'd often lacked empathy through their relationship, especially when he lost his job. June couldn't understand his distraught and frankly, she didn't care. He left her faster than she could blink. Her and their daughter, whose existence he had no idea of.

June sought out drugs as a cure to the emptiness left by everyone leaving her. It wasn't long before she'd become addicted. It runs in her family, the need for numbness. Her spiraling downwards is no surprise to anyone.

June's sister Nadine, as luck would have it, is doing quite well. She is in high school now and flourishing. She's going through all the normal high school experiences with great pleasure. She's even made the honor roll.

All while having no knowledge of where June ended up. Nadine doesn't remember much about June, being so young when they separated.

Torn apart, Nadine got a new loving family all while June lost the only real connection she had.

---

Relaxing on the park bench, the lingering smell of cigarette smoke stains her salvation clothing. Dark purple bruises form beneath her hollow eyes, track marks branding her bony arms. Her disheveled hair is pulled into a messy bun on top of her head. Utterly in disarray.

June doesn't really have a steady job, selling her body to men to put food on the table. Washing away the memories with gin at the end of the night.

She watches the other parents interact with their children. They kiss bruises when their kids scrape their knees and beam at their young who climb the metal structure. June watches her young girl impassively. As if she is someone else's child, a transient stranger. Not a little girl whose DNA coursing through her veins is half that of June's.

Her daughter, Jenny, wears Salvation Army clothing torn at the seams. Her nose is dotted with the same freckled pattern as June's. Her eyes are the sharp forest green like her father. Her hair, a curly mess, which June attempted to tie back into two buns, some tendrils falling out of place.

Jenny is a bully, tormenting the other children on the playground while June watches empathetically. She couldn't care less.

"Hey, mama!" Jenny screams against the wind, her little legs kicking against the air. She had just kicked another child away from this swing, who ran crying to his mother. A mother who then looked at June accusingly.

June shrugs, bringing the cigarette to her cracking, dry lips.

Her lungs fill with the familiar vapor, puffing out a spiral in front her face. The nicotine provides enough buzz for June to stay coherent, alert. Enough so she can make sure no harm comes to Jenny. Not that it extends to protecting others from the abusing little girl so similar to her mother at that age.